Dis-Integrating American Public Schools

Racially integrated public schools have not become embedded
in the foundation of American public policy.

Racially integrated public schools have not become
embedded in the foundation of American public policy.

Two massive domestic social experiments were undertaken by the
American federal government in the 20th century. The first—the
establishment of a modern welfare state—succeeded. Although never
attaining levels found in most European states, entitlements to health
care for the elderly, Social Security, unemployment compensation, a
minimum wage, and even some form of monetary support for the needy are
now accepted parts of American life. Arguments continue about the
appropriate scale and shape of these programs, but not about their
existence. Powerful constituent groups now guard these programs against
their most vociferous opponents; political suicide awaits any
politician who advocates eliminating any of these programs.

By contrast, the second social experiment—the racial
integration of public schools—has failed. Racially integrated
public schools have not become embedded in the foundation of American
public policy. Nor do powerful claimant groups protect integrated
schools. Indeed, even the policy's intended
beneficiaries—African-Americans—no longer press
energetically for it. In fact, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, which designed and executed the arduous
legal strategy that won school desegregation in the courts, now has
difficulty maintaining a public posture favorable to it against an
indifferent and sometimes hostile membership.

Consider this brief comparison: Despite the ascendancy of
anti-welfare-state conservative Republican presidents like Ronald
Reagan, welfare-state expenditures continue to increase incrementally
from one government budget to the next. By contrast, according to the
Harvard University researcher Gary Orfield, the major scholarly expert
on school desegregation, there were more black students in schools
whose student populations were more than 50 percent minority in 1991
than in 1971, several years before most busing for integration even
began. The proportion of black students in entirely segregated
schools increased in the late 1980s and 1990s, despite the Clinton
administration's supposed friendly stance toward African-American
interests. In the Reagan administration's early legislative blitzkrieg,
Congress repealed the Emergency School Aid Act of 1972, the principal
federal law used to spend public money on school desegregation. Can one
imagine a comparable fate for, say, the Social Security Act of 1935, or
even the much less popular Federal Housing Act of 1949? The question
answers itself.

Of course, no one needs a flurry of statistics to prove the obvious.
A day's drive around any major metropolitan area will readily reveal
the dearth of white faces at recess in inner-city public schools, and
the dearth of black faces at recess in outer- ring suburban public
schools. The hope 10 years ago that increasing black flight to
inner-ring suburbs would integrate suburban schools has now proven
abortive. Residential and public school segregation in suburbs remains
the rule. For example, Prince George's County, Md., a Washington suburb
that received much national publicity not so long ago for its supposed
residential and school integration, contained 17 public schools
(outside of its magnet school programs) which were 90 percent
African-American in 1993. The ambitious magnet school program it
installed in 1985 has not stymied the tide towards segregation.
Overall, white enrollment in Prince George's County has continued to
decline despite the widely touted, innovative, well-funded, and
high-quality magnet school program.

Curiously, the failure of school integration has been met with
deafening silence in the media. Even The New York Times' highly
praised series on race relations in America, which won a Pulitzer Prize
in 2000, had little to say about integrated schools. It is a maxim of
science that failed experiments teach us as much as successful
experiments. Of course, politics isn't a laboratory science; still, it
is surprising how little discussion and how few public intellectuals
have taken on the topic of school integration's failure. Surely the
most ambitious and idealistic domestic political undertaking of the
last 50 years deserves better, at least a decent public burial, an
autopsy, an obituary, even a eulogy, perhaps even a national requiem
mass.

Many Americans apparently believe integration will
inevitably and naturally occur even though people actually prefer
segregation!

No doubt the press can be faulted for ignoring the demise of school
integration. But does the press bear a responsibility for the actual
demise of integrated schooling? Many think so, including Mr. Orfield,
who writes, "Nationally, the media have given tremendous attention to
the worst cases of school desegregation and to the best cases of
compensatory education in inner-city schools." According to him, the
media have created a climate of opinion hostile to integration and
favorable to the resegregation of public schools, a process that began
with the Milliken I U.S. Supreme Court case in 1974, which
effectively exempted suburban districts from enforced desegregation
orders involving adjoining inner-city districts.

To buttress his case, Mr. Orfield cites the heavy attention
newspapers gave to the bitter struggle over desegregation of the Boston
public schools. By emphasizing the failures and conflicts of school
desegregation, this argument goes, the media encouraged the public to
resist and try to escape school integration.

However, the evidence does not support Gary Orfield. The fact is
that newspapers (I can't speak for television) have generally portrayed
racially integrated public schools positively. Having shared Mr.
Orfield's skepticism, I was surprised by my careful examination of the
way major national newspapers have portrayed integrated schools over
the last 10 years. On the whole, these newspapers have strongly
defended integration; certainly they cannot be blamed for school
resegregation. In fact, if there is one thing to be learned from my
examination, it is humility about the power of the press to dampen the
American ardor for racially segregated public schools.

I examined 375 newspaper articles and editorials under the heading
"integrated schools" in the Lexis/Nexis newspaper archive between 1991
and 2001. Overwhelmingly, these stories described integrated schools
favorably. To be sure, newspapers might be faulted for not having
printed more such stories; in few large dailies was there a continuous
series of favorable articles. Moreover, anyone who has ever attempted
to do field research on integrated schools knows how difficult it can
be to gain access to such schools. Superintendents, principals, and
teachers often resist opening their racially mixed schools to scrutiny,
fearing to upset the delicate political balance they must strike. As a
result, it may be that only success stories get reported in the press.
Nevertheless, the point remains: Major newspapers have generally
portrayed integrated schools in positive ways. This fact makes all the
more revealing the failure of school integration.

Let's look at some examples of this positive coverage. A number of
stories publicized major social science research on the benefits of
integrated public schools. The Chicago Sun- Times, for example,
reported on a study showing that school integration before the age of
10 reduces racial conflict (Jan. 13, 1993). The Minneapolis
Star Tribune detailed studies demonstrating that school integration
improves academic achievements for blacks (Feb. 4, 1995).

In other articles, research findings were given life through the
telling of schools' experiences. Newsday of Long Island, N.Y.,
for example, described in a May 17, 1994, story how Farmville, Va., a
bastion of opposition to school desegregation in the immediate
aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision,
has created a successful integrated school system, thanks in large part
to an innovative superintendent and an excellent academic program that
lured whites back from private academies. Newspapers argued these
points editorially as well. For instance, in a Sept. 28, 1997,
editorial, The Buffalo News in New York said that only through
integrated schools can blacks get the money they need to school their
children effectively.

Stories favorable to integrated schools appeared in such cities as
Denver; Omaha, Neb.; St. Louis; Kansas City, Mo.; Oklahoma City; and
Atlanta, all of which were at the time considering policies that would
have effectively resegregated public schools. Only in a few cities that
have abandoned desegregation efforts, such as Cleveland, did news
stories portray integrated schools as a failure. Even in Milwaukee,
among the most segregated metropolitan areas in America, the local
newspapers portrayed school integration as at least partly
beneficial.

The brute fact is that white parents have more money
than black parents to pay for schools, public or private.

A few newspaper articles either highlighted innovative programs for
achieving school integration or actually proposed new ones. For
example, an editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for June
26, 1998, described a successful regional integration plan spanning
several Connecticut towns and school districts—and suggested that
such an alternative be considered in lieu of declaring Pittsburgh a
"unitary" school district and abandoning integration. The Washington
Post proposed (Nov. 16, 2000; Nov. 30, 2000) that the Prince
George's County schools that accomplish integration be rewarded
financially, thus providing new incentives for integration.

Of course, many news stories do blast school integration. These cite
persistent inequality in the academic achievement of blacks and whites,
the purported virtues of neighborhood schools that preserve racial
cultures, the evils of white flight, and the pervasiveness of black
disenchantment. Some stories specifically advocate unitary status for
districts (meaning a legal finding that they're free of the vestiges of
school segregation), compensatory education programs in resegregated
schools, and even resegregation itself.

But these negative stories are a minority; major newspapers are
simply not responsible for the failure of school integration.

A complete postmortem on the demise of school integration would
examine other likely causes of death, such as persistent residential
segregation; the adroitness of conservatives in discrediting integrated
schools; the unpopularity of busing; continuing white flight; "identity
politics"; white racism; black disillusionment; and unfavorable Supreme
Court decisions.

While the debate about causes will occupy an army of social
scientists over the next generation, an equally important topic that
begs discussion is the consequences of school integration's
death.

The chief consequence, I believe, is that Americans have adopted a
series of comforting illusions—social myths, if you will—to
rationalize the dismantling of their ambitious but deeply conflicted
experiment. These myths now dominate what passes for public policy on
school integration. Because these myths are essentially psychological
camouflage, they bear little relationship to facts. Indeed, they
prevent our facing facts. Ultimately, they are the latest version of
the chronic American refusal to confront race honestly.

One popular myth held by many conservatives and some liberals is
that voucher programs can deliver integrated schools to inner-city
children. This is nonsense. There are far too many poor black
inner-city children for any foreseeable voucher program to absorb.
Moreover, most white suburban parents—who control the purse
strings of state-financed voucher programs—have no reason to
support a large voucher program. These parents are generally quite
happy with their overwhelmingly white public schools. Why then should
they wish to pay for a school voucher program that will mainly benefit
poor black children?

Surely at least some of the Republican politicians who advocate
voucher programs realize this fact, raising the question of whether
their purported interest in improving education for blacks (who, after
all, rarely vote for them) is anything more than cheap symbolism.
Moreover, most of the schools which want to take part in voucher
programs are financially strapped parochial or low-performing private
schools. These schools want voucher students because they can't compete
against better public and private schools. So why should we assume they
will help poor blacks? Unsurprisingly, there is no convincing evidence
that school voucher programs have produced significant academic
benefits for voucher students, white or black. Don't expect any such
evidence.

Surely the most ambitious and idealistic domestic
political undertaking of the last 50 years deserves better, at least
a decent public burial, an autopsy, an obituary, even a
eulogy.

Another myth is that more standardized testing and serious
"accountability" will raise black student achievement. Even if this
were true, it would still not substitute for the imperfect but real
racial interaction that takes place within integrated schools. In any
case, Congress whittled down President Bush's proposed penalties for
low-performing, "unaccountable" inner-city schools. Just as well, for
if poorly performing schools did indeed shut down, what would happen to
the poorly prepared inner-city students in these schools? How would
they be allocated among better schools? Wouldn't these students feel
stigmatized, dislocated, and intimidated? Should we expect other
schools to welcome them with open arms? And will there be enough money
to improve poor schools that don't meet the new targets?

My guess is that sooner or later the usual testing charade will
ensue: The performance standards ultimately adopted will be low enough
to keep many schools from being punished. The result: little real
educational reform.

Yet another myth is that resegregated schools are better for blacks
than integrated schools. Legally, this argument is quite ingenious; it
manages to reassert the logic of Plessy v. Ferguson
without overruling Brown v. Board of Education. Sadly,
many blacks have fallen for this myth, arguing that it demeans black
children to believe they can learn only by sitting next to white
children. Also, some black leaders argue, resegregation will protect
black culture from the gradual eradication that would occur in an
integrated setting. Moreover, resegregration relieves blacks of the
disproportionate burden they have borne under most desegregation
arrangements. Finally, some resegregation proponents claim that
resegregated schools will lure white parents back to cities. No longer
having to fear for the education or physical well-being of their
children in integrated schools, whites will revitalize blighted city
neighborhoods and revivify downtowns.

This myth too is easily and simply demolished. The brute fact is
that white parents have more money than black parents to pay for
schools, public or private. Parents are mainly interested in good
schools for their own children, not for the children of others. It
follows that whites will only support black students who happen to be
in school with white children. Thus, only if they are sitting
next to white children will black children benefit educationally.

By contrast, resegregation forces poor black parents, underfunded
minority school districts, and low-tax-base, largely black cities to
continue their losing struggle to come up with educational money they
don't have. Put differently, blacks who favor resegregation are doing
whites the great favor of relieving both their guilty consciences and
their pocket books.

Nor does evidence suggest that resegregation lures white families
with young children back into cities. The economics and sociology of
cities—not to mention the real estate market—increasingly
favor affluent singles, couples without children, or "unconventional"
households, such as gays. Most of these people believe they have no
stake in a strong public school system.

Lastly, however we define black culture (rap? spirituals?), it
doesn't seem to improve the educational performance of black children
in such indispensable skills as reading, mathematics, writing, and
science. In any case, why should we believe that black culture is at
risk in an integrated setting? Those blacks who hold this view sell
their culture short. Black culture, like the culture of any group, is
not fixed: It evolves over time. Indeed, it may undergo a renaissance
as it comes into contact with other cultures. Surely this is one lesson
of the Harlem Renaissance.

Mythology, of course, can support utterly contradictory beliefs.
According to a USA Today poll on Jan. 1, 2000, 81 percent of
whites and an amazing 69 percent of blacks believe that, given time,
integration will take place naturally, a point of view amply
unsupported by history. In fact, according to Harvard's Mr. Orfield,
many of these same people state that segregation is "natural" because
people prefer to be "with their own kind." In short, many Americans
apparently believe integration will inevitably and naturally occur even
though people actually prefer segregation!

This new racial mythology is tragic. It perpetuates the age-old
racial divide that public school integration was intended to overcome.
Sadly, Americans have apparently embraced these illusions despite
reading a press that actually promoted the truth: Namely, that the
much-maligned policy of enforced public school integration is the only
educational policy shown to have narrowed ever so slightly the
educational and social inequalities between whites and blacks.

So willful a flight from reality is breathtaking. It demonstrates
the lengths we seem willing to go to make of our unfair and injurious
racial order a perpetually renewed, self-inflicted wound.

Richard M. Merelman is a professor emeritus of political science
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Richard M. Merelman is a professor emeritus of political science at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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